News

A pandemic-era Netflix binge launched a Waterloo Engineering alum's career in Formula 1.

Christina Sullivan (BASc '23, mechatronics engineering) discovered an unexpected passion for the technical and engineering dimensions of motorsport from watching Drive to Survive during COVID-19. She secured an internship with Williams Racing in the U.K. and has been on the F1 team full-time since graduation.

Two local health-tech companies have received a combined $1.9 million from the Government of Ontario to expand manufacturing, accelerate commercialization and bring advanced medical technologies to global markets.

Intellijoint Surgical Inc. and Vena Medical were both founded by Waterloo Engineering alumni and grew out of their fourth-year Capstone Design projects.

Fourth-year civil engineering student Thomas Fulton completed his last co-op work term at Caivan, the Ontario-based real estate developer and founder of the Future Cities Institute (FCI) at Waterloo.

As part of Caivan’s land development team, Fulton applied his engineering and technology skills to support purpose-built housing solutions amid Canada’s ongoing affordability challenges.

Bacteria engineered to eat cancerous tumours from the inside out have been developed by Waterloo Engineering researchers in a promising new approach to treatment.

The interdisciplinary research team found two key solutions to use a bacterium called Clostridium sporogenes, which is commonly found in soil and can only grow in environments with absolutely no oxygen, to effectively consume cancer.

An international research team led by Waterloo Engineering has found a way to turn plastic waste into the main ingredient in vinegar using sunlight.

Their discovery could help reduce plastic pollution, especially in water, while also producing acetic acid, a chemical widely used in food production, chemical manufacturing and energy applications.

Tech startup Rotostitch, an automated textile manufacturing company, raised USD $1 million in a pre-seed funding round to accelerate development of its next-generation textile production platform.

Co-founded in 2025 by Waterloo Engineering alum Leah McClure (BASc ’24, mechanical engineering) and Anson Tsang, Rotostitch is on a mission to reinvent garment construction with greater efficiency, starting with the stitch.

Waterloo Engineering alum Doug Kavanagh (BSE ’06, software engineering) is the medical director of OceanMD, a health-tech company he co-founded in 2012 to improve clinical workflows. Today, more than 50,000 health-care professionals across Canada use the company’s platform.

Kavanagh was part of the Faculty’s inaugural software engineering cohort. He then went on to complete his medical training with the goal of developing tools to better connect health-care patients and practitioners.

Work by researchers at Waterloo Engineering demonstrates how advanced algebra can help reveal the deep patterns and symmetry at the heart of music.

Dr. Olga Ibragimova, a former PhD student in computational mechanics, and Dr. Chrystopher Nehaniv, a professor of systems design engineering, used group theory - a branch of mathematics that studies symmetry and transformations - to examine melody.

Dr. Mary Wells received an appointment to the Order of Ontario, the province’s highest civilian honour, in recognition of leadership that advanced education, research and access to engineering across the province.

Wells, dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo since 2020, was named among 30 appointees for 2025 by the Honourable Edith Dumont, lieutenant-governor of Ontario and chancellor of the Order of Ontario.

The Faculty of Engineering is mourning the loss of Dr. Brian Le Lievre, a professor emeritus in civil and environmental engineering. Le Lievre died on Jan. 2, 2026, at the age of 98.

Le Lievre was part of the University of Waterloo’s earliest generation of scholars in soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering, helping shape the department in its founding years. Across more than 25 years at Waterloo, he taught, mentored and led with a steady focus on students and the discipline.